Mom cultivated Pearce's tennis dreams

Carol Pearce helped plant the seed before she died 22 years ago. Her son Brad was good, very good. She knew it. But the first year he became a professional tennis player she died after a long battle with cancer.

This spring, in absentia physically, Carol should be plenty proud the little tyke tennis player she inspired is enshrined in two lofty tennis halls of fame.

Brad Pearce should be too young for such inductions.

Hall of Fame deals are honors we usually heap on heads with white hair, bodies comfortably settled in rocking chairs, retired warriors who rant on about their glory days as their audience plots an exit.

Instead, Pearce, BYU's men's tennis coach, his face barely aged since Timpview High, quietly and modestly accepts the lanyards hung his way.

Inducted into the Utah Tennis Hall of Fame in March, Pearce will join 16 other UCLA alums, including Arthur Ashe and Jimmy Connors, in the Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame at the NCAA championships in College Station, Texas, on May 20.

In my opinion, Pearce is the greatest tennis player ever produced by Utah.

But the thing about the Brad Pearce story that stands out the most is he believed a long time ago he could play at the top. He told folks back in elementary school he would one day play for UCLA, the nation's top program. He did. He did it all. I think mothers, more than anyone, plant those dreams in kids.

William James, the most prominent American psychologist of the 19th century, was once asked the most important finding of the first half century of university research. He replied, people by and large become what they think about themselves. Johnny Miller once said the "affirmation" that mothers and fathers give their children is huge. It defines who they are. It happened with him.

Miller said the best example is Tiger Woods, whose father always affirmed Tiger would be the greatest who ever played the game. Brad Pearce envisioned himself on Wimbledon's center court as a child. He just made it happen. "When you are a player, you are just playing tennis and working on making a living and getting your ranking up, trying to be the best player you can be and you're not thinking about the Hall of Fame," said Pearce.

This is a long way from the days when Pearce, at age 4, wielded a cutoff squash racquet and pounded balls against walls and towards anybody who'd be willing to volley. He hung around BYU's courts, where his dad coached and sister Leslie played. He learned early to control a fuzzy ball and impose his will on its trajectory.